From an ordinary fan’s point of view

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (2011)

If all these news about the world ending next year are true, then you really have to thank Warner Bros. for releasing the movie this year. It is indeed a glorious, well-deserved culmination of a worldwide phenomenon, but the eighth installment of the Harry Potter franchise felt quite leaning more towards the spectacle display of cutting-edge visual and special effects and the slap-in-your-face manifestation of groundbreaking cinematography. Watch it in 2D or IMAX.

Perhaps such a daunting task was deemed inevitable, for movies – summer movies in particular – have always, unfailingly, been made primarily for pleasuring the moviegoer’s eyes. If one is not looking for the benefit of visual imagery then he might as well forget about heading to the theatres for some big-budgeted cinematic adaptation and simply read all the seven books while sitting on a comfortable chair on a lovely afternoon, leaving all of J.K. Rowling’s exquisite world to the surest of hands he will find: his own imagination.

But it has always been a huge sunk cost for the author herself and the production team – an insurmountable undertaking on their part – of having to forgo bits of narrative and dialogue here and there to allow more room for wand-wielding witches and wizards and magic spells flying from one end of the movie screen to the other, knowing how the final part of the story unfolds. In fairness to the cast and crew, there was an overall good depiction and fairly substantial examination of the story’s main characters, i.e. Harry and Voldemort; but any huge fan of the series would not be able to deny that it was a painful disappointment to see how some of Rowling’s elaborate creations were utterly left with little screen time to be vindicated and given the attention that they truly deserve. Fred Weasley, Nymphadora Tonks, Remus Lupin, and Bellatrix Lestrange are just few of the many other characters whose presence on the silver screen seemed too inadequate and abrupt that moviegoers who might decide to watch the film without having any prior knowledge of the books would probably find themselves unable to emotionally relate to the intricacies and complexities of these relatively smaller yet equally important characters.

Although it has its particular weaknesses just like any other mainstream blockbuster installment, overall it is a worthy film to end this epic finale to the multibillion-dollar series. To those of us who have grown up with and grown to love Harry, his friends and even his enemies, we might think of taking it as more than just a two-hour movie: Deathly Hallows Part 2 is, by all means, albeit heart-wrenching to think about, a strikingly emotional and symbolic end to the literary comforts of our childhood days.